On July 27, 2014, Officer David Gerlach noticed two men with a flat tire on the side of the road. He ‘offered his assistance’ with changing the tire, but the men, Ronald Carden and Nicholas Thomas, politely declined his services, and the ‘helpful’ cop began to leave. However, instead of leaving, the officer decided to harass the men for no apparent reason.

Officer David Gerlach approached the men again and began running their license plates even though no laws had been broken. He told Carden, the passenger, to “come back here for a second.” When Carden walked toward the officer, as he was instructed to do, the officer felt it was necessary to place his hands on Carden. Carden attempted to back up from the officer, but Officer Gerlach approached him again and grabbed his shirt. Carden, fearing for his safety, punched the officer and ran.

Off camera, you can hear the officer using a taser on Carden for several seconds. Later, you can hear gunshots and then silence – Carden is dead.

Prior to Officer Gerlach placing his hands on Carden, this was a peaceful encounter in which Carden complied with everything the officer had requested. In fact, it wasn’t until after the officer decided to assault Carden that things took a turn for the worse. This situation was created entirely by Officer Gerlach and his attempt to escalate the situation to where physical violence was necessary.

Now, the family has filed a $3 million wrongful-death lawsuit in U.S. District Court against KPD Officer David Gerlach, Police Chief David Rausch, and the city of Knoxville. According to the lawsuit, Officer David Gerlach executed Carden while he was running away.

A Phoenix Police Officer is back on patrol after he was fired for using "excessive force."

Four months ago, the police chief terminated Officer Kevin McGowan for kicking out a suspect's teeth.

McGowan appealed and on Thursday, the city's Civil Service Board voted to reinstate him.

The incident in question was all caught on surveillance video. It shows McGowan using what's called a "kick-strike" to restrain and handcuff 18-year-old, Patrick D'Labik, who says he was a victim of police brutality.

"I didn't really feel it at first. I just tasted blood," he says. "Then, as soon as I spit, I realized my teeth was out."

The officer says he just wanted to question the teen, who was spotted with a possible murder suspect. But, D'Labik admitted to ABC15 he took off because he had weed in his pocket and he didn't want to go to jail.

On October 27, 2011, Baltimore police officer Joe Crystal witnessed two fellow cops beating up a drug suspect after the suspect, fleeing from the officers, kicked in the door of a home belonging to another officer's girlfriend. Faced with the difficult decision of whether to turn in his fellow officers, Crystal felt he had to do the right thing, and reported the officers’ actions to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

As a result, Crystal was labeled a "snitch" and a "rat cop" by many of his fellow officers and subjected to threats and intimidation -- including having a dead rat placed on his car’s windshield. Eventually, in 2014 he bowed to the pressure and resigned from the Baltimore PD.

In this exclusive interview, Crystal and The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur discuss:

- Crystal’s background, and how he grew up always wanting to be a cop.
- Working with an officer who could have been the real-life Pryzbylewski from “The Wire.”
- The consequences of turning in his fellow cops.
- The difficulties he’s faced in finding another job.
- The critical difference between police culture in big cities and small towns.
- Why cops are always inclined to protect one another.
- How cop culture and gang culture are similar.
- Whether community policing is a possible solution to the “us vs. them mentality of urban police forces.
- Why police training is an important part of the problem.
- Why he remains hopeful that policing can be improved.

A Philadelphia police officer was reassigned to desk duty and stripped of his service weapon on Friday, the day after video surfaced showing him pressuring a motorist to donate to a fundraising event.

In the first video, posted to Facebook on Thursday, Officer Matthew Zagursky is seen giving the driver a choice of either buying tickets to an annual police and firefighter fundraiser, or having his car towed.

"You and your friend got any money to buy these 'Thrill Show' tickets?" Zagursky asks. "Either you buy these or I take your car. 'Cause it's unregistered."

Zagursky then tells the man that the tickets cost $10 each and reminds him to "support cops like me." The driver is seen holding cash, although the video doesn't show him giving it to the officer.

The officer is a nine-year veteran, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In a second video, Zagursky uses a homophobic slur while questioning the driver about his pink windshield wipers.

Zagursky says the pink wipers make the driver look like a "fruitcake" and suggests he support breast cancer in a different way.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey took quick disciplinary action against Zagursky after seeing the videos on Friday morning, the Inquirer reports. "Nothing he did was right," the chief said.

Ramsey said that departmental investigators are looking into the incident to find out more details, including the identity of the driver, who posted the videos under the name Rob Stay Faded.

The chief plans to refer the case to prosecutors, the Associated Press reports. "That's totally inappropriate, and it could very well be illegal," Ramsey said.

Philadelphia police have faced high-profile accusations of corruption in the past, although those allegations involved amounts of more than $30. In May, six officers were found not guilty of federal charges stemming from claims that they had routinely stolen money from drug dealers and engaged in a yearslong plot to cover their tracks.

The loaded gun, badge and ammunition taken from a car at a popular East Bay shoreline park belonged to the UC Berkeley police chief, authorities said Monday.

Margo Bennett, head of the campus police force, lost her gun, police badge, ammunition, department-issued laptop, iPad, cell phone and diamond ring when her unmarked Ford Escape was broken into while it was parked near the Mudpuppy’s dog grooming business at Point Isabel Regional Shoreline in Richmond, officials said.

Bennett had gone for a jog before work Friday morning and returned about 8:15 a.m. to find her left rear window smashed, according to university officials and Carolyn Jones, spokeswoman for the East Bay Regional Park District, which manages the shoreline.

Bennett joined the UC Berkeley Police Department as a captain in 2002 and was named chief two years ago.

"The longer an encounter continues between a citizen exercising their Rights and the police looking to arrest them for something... the likelihood of Terrorism being used as an excuse for the harassment or violation of the citizen's Rights grows exponentially."

License plate scanners are a contentious subject, generating lots of debate over what information the government should have, how long they should have it, and what they should do with it. However, it seems policy changes are driven more by practical matters than privacy concerns. Earlier this year, Ars Technica reported that the Oakland Police Department retained millions of records going back to 2010. Now, the department has implemented a six-month retention window, with older data being thrown out. Why the change? They filled up the 80GB hard drive on the Windows XP desktop that hosted the data, and it kept crashing.

Why not just buy a cheap drive with an order of magnitude more storage space? Sgt. Dave Burke said, "We don't just buy stuff from Amazon as you suggested. You have to go to a source, i.e., HP or any reputable source where the city has a contract. And there's a purchase order that has to be submitted, and there has to be money in the budget. Whatever we put on the system, has to be certified. You don't just put anything. I think in the beginning of the program, a desktop was appropriate, but now you start increasing the volume of the camera and vehicles, you have to change, otherwise you're going to drown in the amount of data that's being stored."

Rohnert Park police have managed to find themselves in the spotlight again after yet another resident claims police used excessive force against him.

This time, a man named Greg Del Secco said that police showed up to his home unannounced, so he raised his arms to show that he was not a threat.

But they took that as a sign that he was a threat, grabbing his hands, pulling them behind his back and handcuffing him, forcing him to sit on a curb while they raided his home without a warrant.

Their claim: A 911 caller reported hearing a woman screaming for help from inside his home.

But no screaming woman was even found inside his home.

Del Secco believes the raid was in retaliation for posting critical comments on the department’s Facebook page after the earlier incident involving his co-worker, Don McComas.

It was just a few weeks ago when McComas was outside of his home when a Rohnert Park police officer drew his service weapon and began following him around his property.

Video of the incident, posted below, quickly went viral, leading to officer Dave Rodriguez being placed on paid administrative leave.

Del Secco exercised his First Amendment to express his grievances with the actions of the Rohnert Park police officer towards his fellow coworker.
But his Facebook comment post was subsequently deleted and seven days later, his home was raided by three Rohnert Park police officers.

Chief Steve Masterson claims the connection is an “odd coincidence.”

Del Secco told KTVU that three Rohnert Park police officers came to his house in the early morning and started banging on his door.

...

Del Secco came to the door and opened it, making sure to keep his hands visible for his safety.
“I put it out so they could see my hand, knowing that I wasn’t opening it with a weapon or anything like that,” Del Secco said. “As that hand, and I stepped out, they grabbed that hand and twisted it behind my back and started cuffing me and taking me off the porch.”

...

Police Chief Steve Masterson says Del Secco was suspicious for putting his hands in the air.

“To me that an indication that he has some involvement in something that’s gone on inside that house,” said Masterson.

To the rest of America, it’s an indication that citizens are taking extra precautions to prevent themselves from being shot.

The Los Angeles police department has recently gone under inspection, due to police officers tampering with video and voice recording equipment.

It has been discovered, through a number of records and interviews, that police officers from the LAPD have been disabling tracking and monitoring equipment upon entering highly populated areas such as cities and town centers. This is a huge problem, especially for the LAPD. Independently, to this day, the LAPD has been in the middle of controversy when it comes to police brutality and crowd control. The removal of such equipment is now preventing officers from being monitored by their department, technically allowing officers to act however they want towards their ‘pray’.

The L.A Times stated that the inspection of the LAPD revealed that “about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas, which help capture what officers say in the field. The antennas in at least 10 more cars in nearby divisions had also been removed.”

According to countercurrentnews.com, the officers have been targeting specific areas to do their illegal police activities, turning off their equipment in these areas regularly.

High ranking officials within the LAPD have been aware of the issue for about a year, but decided not to investigate which officers were behind it. However, the department did issue out warnings and began checking the equipment before and after shifts.

Members of the police commission, who oversee the department, were shocked to find out about the scandal months after its first discovery; the commission was not briefed about the discovery, nor was it mentioned to them directly, the commission found out about the scandal though an interview with The Times. The overseers were horrified to find that the officers they thought they could trust were actually concealing evidence, or possibly even committing illegal acts themselves.

he story of this morning's live "on air" shooting of a local TV news reporter in Virginia is horrifying on many, many levels. Like with many senseless killings, there are all sorts of "big questions" being raised, most of which aren't really appropriate Techdirt fodder, though I'm sure those of you interested in those things can find other outlets for them. However, one tangential story fits right into Techdirt's core areas of focus: apparently two BBC reporters who were covering the police pursuit of the apparent shooter (who then shot himself) were forced by police to delete their own camera footage. This is illegal. I don't know how many times it needs to be repeated. Even the DOJ has somewhat forcefully reminded police that they have no right to stop anyone from photographing or videotaping things, so long as they're not interfering with an investigation. And yet...

Two BBC reporters covering the police pursuit of Vester Lee Flanagan said that cops threatened to seize their car and camera if they didn't delete footage of site where the Flanagan shot himself. "Was too far away to get any good footage. One officer threatened to tow my car and take my camera," reporter Franz Strasser tweeted. "Watched me delete my one file, and let me go. Other officer apologized and said we have to understand." His colleague, Tara McKelvey, filmed the encounter.

It appears that the cops used the same bullshit excuse we've seen them use in the past: that it's "evidence."

...

As has been noted before, this is a clear violation of Constitutional rights, and the BBC and the reporters in question could file a civil suit against the police department, potentially winning a fair amount of taxpayer money because the police in Virginia are apparently unfamiliar with the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Kenneth “Mark” Lewis, who is an Internal Affairs investigator for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, was caught on tape admitting to widespread racism within the department, illegal hacking, and dozens of other crimes.

The audio calls were recorded by a woman, “Jessica”, who Officer Lewis was reportedly met online, and ‘fell in love’ with the woman. (Click here for the raw audio files)

During the several hours of recorded calls, Officer Lewis talks about one of his primary job duties – protecting the Sheriff. He does this by traveling all over the country, conducting investigations into anyone who might harm the sheriff’s image, or anyone trying to oppose the sheriff in the general election. Those investigations include digging into the person’s finances, in addition to close family members.

During one phone call, Officer Lewis refers to African-Americans as dumb blacks, poor, uneducated, and to top it all off, states that blacks act like animals.

There is a long discussion about who recorded those tapes. Some are claiming it is the founder of pbsotalk.com, Mark Dougan. It is claimed that Mark may have used a digital voice recorder to impersonate ‘Jessica’. However, the subject of why or how, is not the point of this article – it’s about the widespread racism within the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office and illegal activities allegedly conducted on behalf of Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.

...

Something tells me he doesn't take complaints, against his fellow whites, from blacks seriously...

Officer Aaron McNamara has resigned after he was caught making highly inflammatory violent and racist statements online.

The statements were alarming because they did not appear to be mere jokes — Officer McNamara literally called for the extermination of the black race, and expressed wishes to “beat the living **** out of” what he called “jungle monkeys” and “------.”

This is a man who planned to patrol our neighborhoods with a loaded pistol.

Now his plans have been dashed.

Over a period of two years until as recently as the Tamir Rice shooting, Officer McNamara would “hang out in the YouTube comment area,” according to the Cleveland Scene.

While there, he was “regularly dropping racial and gay slurs, unambiguously expressing hatred toward minorities and anyone who dare not comply with police,” reports the Cleveland Scene.

This included him expressing a wish to “beat the living **** out of that ------,” a comment that he left under a video of what appears to be a black child.

And it only got worse.

On one video of a child filming police, he said that the child’s life was a waste, and alluded with approval to the idea of the child being raped in prison for daring to film police.

A group of activists shouted profanities at Denver police officers Wednesday morning as they removed a tent that had been set up in front of a Denver courthouse.

The clash between the activists and the police came less than 24 hours after a federal judge issued an injunction that trumped a Denver judge's order barring public demonstrations at the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse.

Within hours of the clash, civil rights attorney David Lane filed a motion in federal court asking the judge to find Denver Police Chief Robert White in contempt of court for violating the injunction.

...

Shortly after 10 a.m., a group of officers approached the activists who had gathered in front of the courthouse and set up a shade tent, table and several chairs. An officer asked the group if they had a permit for the "structure." After several people shouted that they didn't need one, the officers instructed the activists to take it down.

The officers began to lower the tent and warned activists that if they interfered, they would be arrested. Some protesters screamed at the officers, but none were arrested. Officers carried the tent, chairs and other items back to police headquarters.

In the motion filed Wednesday afternoon, Lane called Denver police "jack-booted thugs," who were retaliating against the pamphleteers.

The order also quoted Wendy Shea, an attorney for White, as saying the city had legal authority to remove items restricting movement on sidewalks.

The lawsuit was filed by Lane after two other men were charged with jury tampering. They had set up a booth and distributed jury-nullification pamphlets to potential jurors. The lawsuit named the city, White and Denver District Court Chief Judge Michael Martinez.

More than $12,000 is cash is missing from a dead man’s belongings. The brother of that deceased man is pointing a finger at the police.

We obtained court records which indicate $19,962 was found in the home of Jimmy Wayne Smith. He was found dead due to natural causes in his Millington home on Brinkley Street on April 28.

According to the police report obtained by FOX13, officers found Smith unresponsive after doing a wellness check because he had not been heard from in three days. They also found prescription medications in his name.

Those medications, along with the cash, were taken to the Millington Police Department’s “safekeepings” room.

We learned that Smith’s brother filed documents in Shelby County Probate Court to inherit the full amount of money. But he said when he went to claim the money, more than $12,000 was missing.

FOX13 spoke with that brother who filed the petition and the attorney who is representing the Smith family. Both declined on-camera interviews, saying this is a pending civil matter.

The TBI is currently investigating the Millington Police Department as a result of this case. FOX13 has learned up to five officers could be at the center of the investigation, and that one has already obtained an attorney.